TNT-Audio Editor's corner - December 2001

Time to look back...

Usually, as the year approaches quickly to its end it's time to take a look back at the past 12 months just to try to summarize what happened.

Well, the most relevant event we had to face is undoubtedly the Twin Towers terrorists' attack in NYC with all that followed. For sure one can't forget this has changed our lives, for one reason or another. Our thoughts go to all the families of the innocents killed by terrorists and by the war in Afghanistan. For me, a killed innocent is always a killed innocent, and it doesn't really matter if one is born in the US or in Afghanistan.
All we can hope is this craziness comes to an end as soon as possible.
Actually the whole World suffered from these tragic events as the economy went down and many vital services for its survival (air transportation and postal services) suffered from a bad crisis.
Did all this affect the small HiFi community? You bet! We've been told sales went down dramatically and international shippings became a nightmare. Usual delivery times between Europe and the US were 15 days before the war now, if one is lucky enough, he has to wait 40 days, hoping the goods will be _actually_ delivered without further troubles.

Just to cite the silliest of the examples, my mega digital cables shooutout test had to be delayed because I expected to receive several samples from the US at the same time while they arrived very, very late.
Anyway, the situation gets better day by day and it seems there's some light at the end of the tunnel. To keep our spirits high, we always listen to massive quantities of good Music and this is what we suggest you to do: play your records, insanely loud! :-) Music will help you to get through. Need some suggestions? Well, just something taken randomly from one of my latest playlists:

Billy Joel "Piano Man"

Mozart "Piano concerts No. 21 K. 467 and No. 27 K. 595

Diana Krall "The look of love"

Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's..."

Emma Shapplin "Carmine Meo"

Bran Van 3000 "Glee"

Perhaps the first four discs are well known, 5th and 6th might need a quick remark. Emma Shapplin is a soprano who sings on electronic music arias (pretty weird stuff, indeed, and an excellent recording BTW) while Bran Van 3000 is a band who mixes very different musical genres, you should listen to them at least once! The cited album is also a strange recording, sometimes harsh sometimes excellent with low frequencies that will make your pants shake (be careful with those minimonitors!).
The 4th album is in memoriam of (ex-Beatles) George Harrison, passed away a couple of days ago. After Sinopoli and John Lee Hooker another gifted talent left us in sorrow.
The history of Pop music owes him so much.

Back to the last 12 months of TNT-Audio. Because of increased traffic and popularity we've been forced to move our servers to new Internet providers and this caused more than a week of total black-out: our site was no longer accessible and so all e-mails sent during that period (around mid August) were irremediably lost. We still apologize for any trouble this may have caused.
We hope everything works better than before now, though not every problem has been successfully solved yet. Nevertheless, we have been able to get a better, faster internal search engine to help you finding articles into our HUGE website. Also, I'm proud to announce you we're ready to publish our monthly access statistics again (now boasting 2 millions of hits per month)! Perhaps not as complete as they were before but certainly more precise and reliable.
As announced on our Readers' Corner we're working to launch a new website devoted to your own DIY designs. Keep your soldering iron warm!

New reviewers have been added to our editorial staff (M.L. Gneier from the US and Hiroshi Iwata from Japan) and they have already produced excellent articles (listening tests of outstanding products and insightful factory tours from Japanese hi-end Companies, respectfully). One of our reviewers, Mr. Dejan Veselinovic, has left us. We thank him for his precious contribution and wish him good luck for his future projects.

Personally, this year brought me so many good things I couldn't ask for more. Above all, the birth of my first daughter Silvia (now 3 months), a sweet and lovely angel fallen from the sky above to make my life happier than ever.
Of course, she already listens to some Good Music, Diana Krall above others :-)
This event may also explain a certain slowness of my reviewing activity :-) because of lack of sleep. Anyway I'm working hard to recover, so pretty soon you should read something about the digital cables shootout test, the magnetic levitation anti-vibration platform known as Relaxa1 by SAP, several phono, mains, interconnect and speakers cables and...more, more, more.

I hope you don't mind if I conclude this editorial cutting and pasting the last period from last year's December editorial.

Before wishing you all the best for the next year let me suggest just a little thing. Considering you don't spend a cent for reading TNT-Audio, plan to donate the amount of a standard yearly subscription for a print magazine to someone who is less lucky than you.
Instead of buying a meter of audiophile cable, plan to help the homeless who lives near you. This will make your HiFi system sound better, trust me.
Oh yes, this advice may sound obvious or even trivial, but I'll take the risk. We'd be happy if - because of our "work" here - someone, who doesn't even know what HiFi is, can receive some help.

Alternatively, plan to buy a gift for you relevant second other (wife, girlfriend, mother, husband etc.) who patiently tolerates your experiments and weird HiFi components in your living room. Don't forget to add a small card with From TNT-Audio with Love on it.